Nicole by OPI Modern Family Collection

I've been enjoying the colours in this collection. I also love how they put the characters names into the polish names :)

Nicole by OPI What's the Mitch-uation?

What's the Mitch-uation? This is a shiny blue with purple tones that come out best beside a purple object. The polish is really thin. Show is 3 coats and I probably could have done a fourth since at certain angles I can still see through it.

{Luxury Lacquers Spring Giveaway}

So the a few nail bloggers teamed up to do an amazing give away, and they would love you to enter

http://www.bloglovin.com/frame?post=2447705785&group=0&frame_type=a&blog=4085262&link=aHR0cDovL3BvbGlzaGFsY29ob2xpYy5jb20vMjAxNC8wMy8wNS9sdXh1cnktbGFjcXVlcnMtc3ByaW5nLWdpdmVhd2F5Lw&frame=1&click=0&user=0

go enter and good luck :)

OPI Hong Kong Collection

OPI's 2008 Hong Kong Collection 

(parts of it)

 I have to say I really like the colours in the Hong Kong Collection it seems since i keep stumbling onto them

Suzi Says Feng Shui. This was from my friend for my birthday. This is a perfect blue. I don't see any greens or purples in it. I rarely find streaks with the OPI colours. They go on smoothly. I just wished they dried quicker :)

OPI says "A serene cobalt blue to balance your yin yang."

Meet Me At The Star Ferry. This is such a neat purple. It looks like a mix of OPI's Significant Other Color and their Romeo and Joliet. I love the light sparkle in it. The reason it looks so much better than my usual quick rush paint job is because it was an actual manicure (I never get them since I'm a swimmer so the water always ruins them so fast and I work in a deli which is also very rough on nails). So I got a manicure form my Aunt for Christmas and it took ONLY 7 months to use since I was waiting for a week or so that I wouldn't be at work to ruin my nails. The price that my Aunt paid for the manicure had gone down so I had enough left over to buy the polish as well. BONUS!! haha :)

OPI says "A Kowloon-lit, moonlit violet"

Jade is the New Black. Its a beautiful jade green, it looks fabulous on nails and toes and works well with nail art.

OPI says "This vibrant green is the new fashion vibe"

Nicole by OPI Gumdrops Collection

Nicole by OPI

Nicole by OPI That's What I Mint from their gumdrops collection. I really like this one, it has a light blue colour mixed in with some darker and lighter colours. The textured is sorta like a light pebbly feel its not overly rough so it won't catch on anything. And because of all the glitter its very durable. I wish they had brighter colours in this collection most of the other colours are quite dark

Nicole by OPI I Lilac Gumdrops from their Gumdrops collection. I love how soft this purple is. I wish they had a green in this shade.

Checkered

I've been wanting to do checkered nails so I chose to do Nicole by OPI's Make a Comet-ment with OPI's Romeo and Joliet

Start with a coloured coat on the bottom and let it dry completely 

If your hands aren't steady enough then you can use tape to make the pattern

First place one tape length-wise

then another across to make a box

now paint in the box with the colour you want to do the other checker

Now take the tape off carefully while the paint is still wet

another way to tape would be to place 2 squares on opposing corners and painting all over

For the second square I chose to free-hand it

and viola

Have fun

OPI Polishes

My beautiful OPI polishes

This amazing person has written down all the OPI polishes and collections they go into (the ones she can find)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sb1dCee1s39sIxJvoDtCR4okiHYfswcSZDhbznoNwkA/edit

I like how OPI has wide, flat brushes for easier coverage

OPI Significant Other Color from the Summer 2005 Brights Collection. I love OPI but it cost more than other brands so I only buy OPI for when my mom wants certain nail art. This one I actually found cheap when I took my Grandma nail polish shopping. This is one of my favorite colours! It is a sheer purple but with the right lights and angles you see green shines which is awesome. So it's perfect when you don't want/need a flashy colour. It doesn't streak either. 

OPI says "Shimmery pink lilac with glints of mint"

 OPI Louvre Me Louvre Me Not from the Fall/Winter 2008 Collection de France. This one I got from a friend for my birthday (even though I told him to get me cheaper ones lol). It's a beautiful deep purple.

OPI says " "Exhibit" your sense of style with this royal purple"

OPI- Romeo and Joliet is from the 1997 Fall/Winter Route 66 collection. It is a beautiful burgundy with red and brown highlights. It's a beautiful colour for toes. This is the first time on my fingers and I really like it. I thought it might be too dark but it's not

OPI says "A deep romantic shade of garnet"

OPI Black Shatter from their 2009 Katy Perry Collection. I'm not a giant fan of shatter polishes, but I do like the black. I lucked out and found this bottle for about $6 at my mall. I think that the best colours for them are blacks, whites, silvers and the sort. The part I'm not a fan of is all the colours since I think crackle works best with stark contrast. The OPI brushes are good and bad. Good for the really small nails and the big nails. The big brushes cover the pinky in one go and the thumb in 2 goes but because crackle shouldn't have any overlap the brush is too small for the other fingers but too big for the brush too do 2 good strokes.

OPI-Alpine Snow from their soft shades collection. It's a great thick, white. It gives full coverage after 2 coats. It's streak free and smooth to put on.

OPI says "Fresh, crisp white, perfect for French-look tips"

So as you can see it dries a little streaky. The chrome dries quickly. It is opaque but it is streaky so spots get missed. I love how shiny it is, they look awesome :) But it has very poor wear time.

OPI says "Do whatever it takes to get your hands on this mirrored chrome"

So this is a nice pale colour. A lot of pictures/swatches I have seen show this colour a lot greener. So either I somehow got a really pale one or everyone is using some amazing camera abilities to make it look more green. Either way I enjoy it. It's a soft pale green in darker lighting and in bright lighting it looks like a very pale baby blue.
What OPI says "Green kissed by the summer sun"

This is OPI's Princesses Rule! from their 2006 Princess Charming. It has now been moved to their core collection under Soft Shades. Its a very soft sparkly pink. Shown is 4 or 5 coats. It works great for wanting polish on but not some bright bold colour. My mom can't wear dark polishes at work so she loves this one because it's durable, its girly and its very light. This colour is a staple for any polish collection.

OPI says "A bright sparkly pink that's tiara worthy!"

Injured Finger

In March of 2011, I was smart enough to cut off most of my nail and a tiny piece of my finger on a meat slicer...and it wasn't even plugged it. I had just sharpened it and I was stupid and managed to bring my finger close enough to the blade...

So these are pictures 6 days later (I didn't want to give the next day pictures since they look a little gruesome)

Much higher and I probably would have ruined my nail. a different angle and I probably would have had more of my finger cut off.

The lucky thing was that since I had just sharpened the blade I had no pain.

My nail still looks weird. one of the free side goes down farther, but that's the only permanent damage done to my nail.

so you can see I still have the scar on the tip of my finger under my nail, the nerves there never grew back, it's sorta weird 

and here you can see that one of the side drops farther

But at least my nail is safe :)

I had a fun time grossing people out with the split nail though :) 

Keep care of your fingers at work is what this is all about :)

Striping Tape Design

I recently bought some coloured tapes and I wanted to try them out.

I had a set of 10 different colours and I already had green nails so unless I wanted my nails to look Christmasy, white was the best option for me to try. 

It's pretty easy to see what I did but here it goes

-2 verticle strips along one side then, 

-2 horizontal strip across the tip of the nail.

This was my first time using tape so I am still learning. I have learnt that I need smaller thinner scissors than just kitchen scissors. I couldn't always get very close. I gave up trying to use scissors on the tiny ends and used nail clippers but I ran the risk of cutting part of my nail.

I also used a top coat to help the tape stick on.

Of course if you didn't feel like making sure the tape fit correctly you can always paint a white coat on the bottom than once dry place your tape on pressing to the edges. Then paint a green on top taking off the tape in the reverse order you put them on.

As you can see I redid the design on a nail wheel. I kept reading how the nails are too close on the wheels so I taped the sides beside the one I was doing.

New Organization

So I know I have already done an organization post but I have since changed how I organize my polishes.
The drawer I was using is a clothing drawer so it was quite wide and the base is only particle board. All my polishes were getting to weigh quite a bit and I could see the base bending this caused me to start worrying about the stability of it.

I remembered watching a youtube video by sayanythingbr00ke on her organization  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOmm6q6I1DI, and at one point she used a little 3-drawer unit to store her polishes in. So I looked up what she used and I was lucky enough to find that Michaels sells them along with many other styles with their Recollections collection (oh btw. if you are looking for nail art or storage stuff scrap-booking stuff works great). http://canada.michaels.com/Storage/products-scrapbooking-storage,default,sc.html?prefn1=brand&prefv1=Recollections

So this collection sells cubes and drawers and what not in similar sizes so you can stack them together and make your own little storage system. Most of these are about 14" cubes.

I chose the one with 3 drawers since I did  the math and each drawer would be tall enough to hold the tall polish bottles but short enough to not waste space. So this sells in Canada in Michaels for about $50 :P but I went to the states on a shopping trip and found it for $40 and there was a 50% off sale (new years sale) so I was lucky and got it for about $20 american.

This size is also perfect since it can sit in my closet underneath my clothes. 

 So I made the bottom drawer all my colour polishes. I used those little circle stickers that are used to keep paper holes strong as a colour branding on top of the polish bottles.
I paint the circle with a coat or two and stick it to the top of the bottle (if the name of the polish isn't on the top), this idea came from Julep who does similar I think. This makes is much easier to see what one I am wanting when they are all crammed into one drawer.
I used the bottom drawer since it stills weighs quite a bit and I didn't want to risk the particle board breaking. The bottom drawer has less than 1cm of clearance so even with bending it will rest on the floor

 My Second drawer is clear coats, base coats, top coats, empties, presents and nail art supplies

 My third drawer is my LED gel polish stuff and a few nail art stuff.

My Dad had a large amount of maple wood (I love maple wood, I made a giant book case from maple in high school one year) so he made me a little carry case for when I do my nails in other rooms (easy transportation). He had me draw the diagram with sizes which was helpful. So I made 7 spots, one for remover, one for a little container to hold used nail cleaning products (I didn't want to risk ruining the vanish and wood with acetone), 2 small spots for nail art and q-tips and what-not, 1 for cotton balls and bigger items and then 2 spots for polishes. 

Ardene Polishes

My Ardene Polishes. 

I have  a few of these since I always used to go there for polishes since the price was pretty good (and I hadn't really discovered the amazingness of Shoppers Drug Mart and their clearance table haha). One problem I have is that their brushes are really thin and round

 Ardene Ballet Shoes. I like this soft pink. The coats are a little streaky at first but a 3rd coat fixes it all.

Ardene Red Sapphire. It's a nice red but it's really thin. Shown is 4 coats. I need to find a nice deep red that doesn't need 50 million coats